Regional Checklists

Users can select any state or province of Canada, the U.S., or Mexico. They can also select any country from North or Central America. The pattern of internal navigation (condensed and expanded checklists, alphabetical index of valid names and synonyms) will not change, but the content will reflect the user's selection. At present the default setting for geography is "North and Central America". Any other geographical subset must be set by the user and will remain in force for the session unless changed. Once a region has been selected all indices will remain set to that choice until the user resets the regional selection. This is done by means of a "session cookie". This cookie contains only information about users' selections while at the site. No information on user or computer identity is saved or sent to any other computer or server. Unfortunatly, it is not possible at this time for users to mix and match localities and totally customize regional lists. This will eventually be added, but requires more complex programming.

In the past users have been limited to 3 separate checklists for access to information on species: Canada and the U.S., the Southeastern U.S., and Mexico. These tabs still function, although they will eventually be phased out. Clicking on the main tab or drop down options will automatically reset the geographic selection.

There are several "predefined" regions that also may be chosen (Canada and the U.S. / North American regions). These were chosen on the basis of broad ecological / biogeographical regions of interest. Due to the structure of the database from which records are summarized, regions are defined on the basis of political boundaries. Unfortunately ecological-biogeographical regions do not correspond with political entities. These regions were chosen to include specific biogeographical elements with the smallest numbers of extraneous species. These regions are defined below. If there is enough interest, new regions can be defined and added.

The information shown on this website is derived from a large database which is constantly being expanded, corrected, and maintained. For all intents and purposes the information on species from Canada, the continental U.S. and Mexico is complete. The database includes all published data on distribution, hosts, and synonymy for all native and exotic species for these countries. Complete information on distribution, hosts, and synonymy from outside the U.S., Canada and Mexico is included for introduced species. All localities within the New World have been georeferenced and are shown on maps for each species. Localities outside the New World are listed, but not mapped. A significant amount of information from Hawaii is included in the database and available here but no attempt has been made to ensure that it is complete. Likewise, information (localities, synonymy, hosts) is not complete for Central America, even though the list of species is complete.

In the short term the tabs for Canada and the U.S., the southeastern U.S., and Mexico will remain available separately. Eventually these will disappear because the same information is available here.

Ideally this region would include only the coastal ranges of northern California, Oregon, Washington, British Colombia and southeastern Alaska. There are a significant number of species restricted to this cool, moist, temperate forest. California and Alaska are not specically included because most (all?) of these species on this list are found in the coast ranges of northen California and southeastern Alaska. Including California would add a very large number of species from totally different environments.

Several of these states (e.g., Montana, Idaho) are frequently grouped as part of the northwest. As defined here, strictly coastal species are excluded. Most (all?) species found in western Oregon, Washington and British Columbia will be on this list.

Arizona is specifically excluded from this list because of the large number of Sonoran / Mexican species found in the southern part of the state and nowhere elese in the U.S. Most (all?) of the species found in montane, temperate forests of Arizona also occur in New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.

Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio are typically considered part of the Great Lakes region. They are not included as part of the query for this region because all 3 include significant numbers of species whose main distribution is actually the southeastern U.S.

Florida and Texas are excluded from this query. The southeastern bark and ambrosia beetle fauna is found in northern Florida and eastern Texas. However southern Florida and southern and western Texas include many species not tuypical of the fauna.